


Late

by Memorycharm (tzy)



Category: Lost in Translation (2003)
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, Yuletide 2004
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-25
Updated: 2004-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-05 00:45:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/400026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tzy/pseuds/Memorycharm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If she could just get the words right, she would write the story down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Late

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2004 Yuletide.

It'd been four nights in a row Charlotte couldn't sleep, and four nights in a row she'd curled up on the sofa and turned on the television. Every night this week, the local channel was showing a Bob Harris feature; this night it was _Hard Drivin'_.

She'd seen _Four on the Floor_ , _Accelerator_ , and _Target Acquired_ already. 

John was in Arizona shooting some singer at a meteor crater. He was supposed to be home tonight, but it was already almost one thirty in the morning, so he'd probably just crashed at the hotel. 

The first part of the movie was all about the bad guys stealing the car with the drugs in it (or was it a bomb? Charlotte had missed the first ten minutes), and Bob didn't even show up until twenty minutes in. The movie must have been one of his first, because he looked really young. As young as Charlotte was now, or even younger.

It was weird, seeing him so young. He probably hadn't been married yet, or had any children. It was weird, seeing him at all.

Sometimes, Charlotte thought she'd imagined meeting him in Tokyo. Like, she'd been so lonely and out of sorts, she'd made up this story about meeting a famous movie star she remembered watching when she was a kid. It was like something out of a movie, except who would make a movie like that?

Not Bob Harris. On the television, he pulled his gun out and tensely waited for the bad guy to walk into his trap. His jaw clenched; the soundtrack thrummed. Charlotte sifted through microwave popcorn she'd made, looking for the half-popped kernels.

The light from the television pulsed and flickered on the living room walls, making everything glow blue and gray. Charlotte's hands looked ghost hands, eating ghost popcorn. Her notebook was on the sofa beside her, abandoned while she watched the movie. It was filled with drawings of hands writing things.

Charlotte drew up her knees and hugged them to her chest. She wanted a cigarette, but she didn't want to go out on the balcony to smoke one, so she ate another handful of greasy, salty popcorn. 

John was on her about quitting again. "They'll kill you," he'd said. It was what he always said.

"No they won't," Charlotte had said, hugging him and burying her nose in his soft green jacket. "But I'll stop anyway."

"Love you," John had whispered into her hair. Then he'd gone to scout the meteor crater. It was great, he said when he called, it looked like a real crater, like on the moon. He'd got her a pen with a meteor rock in it, and a shot glass.

On screen, Bob lit up a Camel straight and stared down at a ferrety little man. He took a long drag and exhaled slowly. "You're going to tell me what I want," he said to the man. The man spilled his guts. 

Charlotte ate some more popcorn. 

Bob had smelled like smoke and flannel sheets and whiskey. His hair was coarse and had once been thick; his face was stubbly and rough. Charlotte remembered every detail. 

She'd jotted a series of notes to remind her in her notebook, her old one, on the flight home. John had slept all the way back. Maybe there was a story in there, somewhere, in her staccato notes, if she could just figure it out.

It was cold, but Charlotte didn't want to get up and walk all the way over to the thermostat. She pulled her grandmother's blue afghan around her shoulders and rubbed her nose.

A commercial for DSL service came on and changed the light in the room from blue to red. Charlotte picked up her notebook and filled in a few more lines in her latest drawing. The hand was wrinkled and strong, and she'd drawn it holding a fountain pen, writing something in big, loopy script.

She never drew what the hands were writing. Instead, each hand wrote out nonsensical combinations of letters, like a child pretending to write in cursive.

_Hard Drivin'_ , an announcer came on and said, was Bob Harris's first breakout movie, the one that had put him on the map. He'd gone on to star in a number of action vehicles, parlaying his steely eyed, intense character into a lucrative career, but hadn't been very lucky in finding a wider range of roles.

Charlotte darkened the shadow under the wrist, then added a smudge of ink on the index finger. She made some extra loops of fake writing.

In the movies, she would've left Tokyo knowing exactly what she should do, and what she was supposed to be. She would've had a moment of knowledge--a Joycean epiphany--that changed her forever. Oh, yes, she would've said, _now_ I know.

Instead, she was still trying to figure things out. Maybe she had had an epiphany, but she just didn't recognize it as such. She read and reread her notebook, the old one she'd written everything in on the plane, over and over, searching for the story she knew might be there. 

If she could just get the words right, she would write the story down.

Every time she tried, though, she ended up doodling another nonsensical word, then extending the lines to draw the hand that wrote them.

Bob was driving a car now, being pursued by some new bad guy. The cars whipped down alleys and through busy intersections, narrowly missing old ladies and women with baby strollers. The bad guy leaned out his window and fired a shot at Bob. 

Charlotte yawned and scrawled some more in her notebook. _Sleep_ she wrote, making each letter fat and round. _I wish we could sleep..._ she added underneath. She put her legs down and sat up so she could write without getting a cramp.

 

The phone rang. Charlotte looked at the clock: two forty-five. Maybe it was John, on his way home. Maybe it was Bob, up late and watching his younger self on television. It wouldn't be hard to find their number, if he wanted to. 

Charlotte picked up the receiver. "Hello?"


End file.
